a. Technical Field
The instant disclosure relates to elongate medical devices, such as catheters and introducers, for example. More specifically, the instant disclosure relates to the detection and measurement of external forces on an elongate medical device.
b. Background Art
Catheters are used for an ever-growing number of procedures, including diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Such procedures involve navigating the catheter through the patient's vasculature to a biological site and, for some procedures and some catheters, initiating and/or maintaining contact between the tip of the catheter and tissue. During such navigation and procedures, it may be desirable to assess the deformation of the catheter tip and/or the force applied to the tip of the catheter to determine if there is contact between the catheter tip and tissue and to ensure that the amount of force does not become so great that the catheter tip inadvertently damages the tissue, such as by puncturing the tissue.
Many systems and methods are known for assessing the force on a catheter tip. However, known systems generally either involve multiple sensors (and thus may be more complicated or larger than desired) or do not detect force with sufficient degrees of freedom (for example, magnitude and/or direction of deflection and/or twisting).
The foregoing discussion is intended only to illustrate the present field and should not be taken as a disavowal of claim scope.